Creflo Dollar - The One True Faith
Jesus made his mind up to forgive you before you even formed into a fetus. When you came here, you were forgiven. Y’all don’t understand what I’m saying. He’s not forgiven you, you know, you go and you mess up and you say, «Oh Lord, I messed up,» and there’s some things you don’t realize. So you say, «Oh Lord, I messed up. Oh God, please forgive me,» but you don’t realize. What is it you don’t realize that he already forgave you. So there’s something that has to happen. You got to realize what already is. You think God is present tense, present time, right now, oh Lord, forgive me. And then you say, «Forgive me,» and then you pretend you heard him say, «Okay, I’ll do it right now». But you’re not gonna hear him say that.
What you gonna hear him say when you’re gonna say, «Lord, forgive me,» he’s gonna say, «Forgiven». He responds to you in the aorist tense. He’s not responding you in the present tense. He’s not even responding you in the past tense. He responds to you in the tense of the finished. Any time you talk to God, he gonna talk to you about the finished. «Oh Lord, make me righteous». «You’re righteous». You remember when Abraham did that? «Lord, I believe, make…» «You’re righteous,» because he did all that before you were born. Nothing we do surprises God. It’s not like you do something, now God gotta figure out a way to work this thing out. You did something, now God got, «Oh, Lord…» God, it ain’t like God, «Oh Lord, they done messed up again».
Come on, y’all, let’s do this. It’s finished. You and I have got to come into this new realm, this realm of the finished. We gotta start operating from the place of the finished. We gotta start moving from the place of the finished. When something is finished, it’s completely done. It is done, it’s over, and watch this, and it cannot be undone. You cannot undo what God has already done. And the reason why a lot of people don’t receive it is because they don’t realize it. And I need you to realize it. And you’re tempted because of your mindset and religion, you’re tempted to say, every time you do something, «Oh God, forgive me». And you hear people say, «You know what? You’re not forgiven until you confess it. You gotta confess it first and then you’re forgiven».
Now God says, «No, you don’t understand. What I did is done. Everything I was gonna do for you, I already did for you. And if you’re gonna walk in the peace of what’s already done, you gotta realize that when I gave you Jesus, I gave you everything. I gave you your forgiveness, I gave you your healing. It’s already done, it’s finished, it’s completed, it…» Our receiving that truth means, oh wow. I just thought about something. When you understand something, you receive it. I’ve always wondered if somebody said, «Receive it». It’s hard to receive something that you don’t understand.
That’s why Proverbs 4 and 7 says, «In all your getting». If you’re gonna get healing, understand you’re healed. If you’re gonna get forgiveness, understand forgiven. If you’re gonna get whatever, understand it’s finished. Understand the finish, understand the aorist tense. Understand it is already done. «In all your getting, get understanding,» 'cause you’re not gonna really get or receive without no understanding. But the more I can bring you understanding, the more you can receive. And it doesn’t take some religious rhetoric that you got to do to get it. You don’t understand, we have been trained in what you got to do to get it. And God’s like, «Who do you think you are? I have done it. It is done. It is finished, can’t be undone. It ain’t you doing nothing. You couldn’t do nothing.
Look at what you did in the first covenant. Look at how y’all mess it up. Mankind was a mess. So I have come and I’ve done this for all of mankind». He gave the whole world Jesus. «I have come for all mankind and I have finished righteousness for every man on the planet. I have finished deliverance for every man on the planet». Well, I’m still sick. «Because you ain’t realized that healing is a finished work. Not even past tense, it’s done. That your healing can’t be undone. Your deliverance can’t be undone, your prosperity can’t be undone. You keep walking around here trying to do something». How insulting.
So I’m retraining my thinking. I’m getting up and say, I live in the realm of the finished. My victory is finished. If there’s a fight, it’s finished. Can I jump ahead just for a moment? May I do this for just a moment? And you don’t have to receive it now, because we’ll go over it again at a later date. But there, it took me 43 years to realize that there are 4 easy steps in living a life of faith and moving in the glory. You want them? 'Cause I believe somebody gonna use this this week. All right, do you understand what I mean when I say, you know, Jesus got on the cross and he said, «It is finished»? And then people have interpreted it all kinds of ways. «Well, his life is over». No, no, no. He said, «No man took my life. I gave it away. If I didn’t give it away, nobody could».
So everything is finished. Everything that’s wrong with you, everything you wanna make right, everything you wanna do, everything you need: done, finished, completed, can’t be undone. The first step is you got to realize what’s finished. And what’s finished, ladies and gentlemen? Everything. Everything. It’s so shocking if you read Ephesians 1, you see all that stuff, you’ve already been blessed with spiritual blessing. I’ve already decided to make you a son before you ever got here. I decided to forgive you. All of the stuff he decided to do before you were born.
So the first thing you gotta do is anything you encounter, you got to say and realize it’s finished. You have to start living in the realm of the finished. That’s number one.
Number two, after you realize, receive. Now, watch this. Your receiving is going to be limited to your understanding. So the more you understand, just go through all the promises in the New Testament and it’s finished. So, once you understand it, by pure fact, through your understanding, you’ve received.
Number three, rest. If it is finished, you should not be laboring to do nothing but rest. You got to learn how to rest in confidence in what’s already done. You got to labor to rest. Something comes up, labor to rest, rest, rest, rest. You’re not trying to do to get to finish what he’s already finished. «Well, I need to do this so God can do that. I need to do that». That’s over. It’s finished. He didn’t ask you for your help, and you didn’t bring nothing to the table. Righteousness, redemption, peace, all that came directly from him. He is the source of everything that’s finished. Ain’t nothing else left to do but rest. And rest doesn’t mean, you know, idleness. It means I am resting in confidence and assurance that this is done, so I’m not gonna try to do it. «Oh well, I’m just such a gossiper. I need to do this and I need to do that».
See, see how your mind think? No, your deliverance is finished. So you got to dwell in the realm of, oh, deliverance is finished. Yeah, you’re tempted to say, «Now I got to do something about that». You just stepped out of the realm of the finished. Here’s the fourth thing to do. Now, while you’re resting, while you’ve received, because you understand, and while you realize, you still got a devil loose who’s gonna try to attack you, distract you, and his job is to take you out of the realm of the finished. The word «have» in the book of Mark chapter 11, when he says, «have faith in God,» that word, Shandra, means echo. It comes from a Greek word that we get the word «echo» from.
When Jesus had the disciples in the middle of the water and all the storms are going on, and Jesus showed up and calmed the storm and he said this: «Why is it that you have no faith»? You know what he’s saying? There’s a storm. Why is it that you’re not echoing your faith? So when the trouble comes, open your mouth up and state the finished. When you’re standing in front of a mountain, and that’s what in Mark chapter 11 he talks about this mountain, when you’re standing in front of a mountain, why are you not echoing what’s finished? Echo what’s finished. You’re not saying it to try to get it to happen. It’s already happened. And so if trouble shows up to try to take you out of the finish, you just echo hey, echo finish, echo healed, echo delivered, echo forgiven, echo. He said whenever trouble shows up, we ought to be echoing what Jesus said when he said, «It is finished».
We’ll develop that as we go on. But just in case some of y’all wanna kick that devil’s butt today, realize it. You need to walk out of here today realizing, «Oh my God, that’s done too». And then you say, «Well, Lord, I need, well, that’s done too. Well, well, Lord, I know I need to do this, so I need… no, that’s done too. Now what I need to do, I need to, I need to pray more so you can… whoa».
See, now you can finally get prayer in the right place, and praying in the right place is I can’t help but to praise and thank you for what you’ve already done. Hey, I got to thank you for what’s already done. Thank you that it’s finished. Thank you that I’m heal, oh, glory to God. Our receiving that truth means we grasp it. We’re now free in our thinking to experience the finished. It’s gotta be grasped. And most church folks hadn’t grasped it because religion has taught us to do this, to do that, to do this, to do that, to do that. And like Taffi was telling me the other day, why would you wanna repeat and try to do something that Jesus has did and already done? She said, «It makes no sense». That’s why it’s called religion. In the Latin, the word «religion» means a return to bondage.
So, religion has kept us bound when the thing’s already been finished. The aorist is a completed action that took place at a point in time. And so when did God forgive? On the cross. It was finished, it was fleshed out in a sense, in time, 2,000 years ago. But the cross is eternal, which means he’s completely forgiven all mankind before time ever began. That sounds strange to Christian folks because they always think that their fraternity is greater than everybody else. But Jesus didn’t come just to forgive your fraternity. He came, it’s all over Scripture. Jesus came to forgive the whole world. «For God so loved the world».
So what about that guy who’s walking around, don’t think God forgave him? He hadn’t realized it yet. What about making disciples? Getting people to realize it’s done. Getting people to realize they’re forgiven. Getting people to realize that God loves them. Getting people to realize, but we turned the whole issue into a heaven and hell issue. And Romans 10 and 8 says: «The righteousness of God doesn’t say who shall go to hell or who shall go to heaven. The righteousness of God is nigh thee even in your mouth». But we keep making it a heaven and hell issue because we really wanna get somebody back. I’ve been living a hard time, y’all been living a good time. You’re going to hell, I’m going to heaven.
And Jesus came, Jesus came to change all that. Jesus came to say anybody that will realize and start living in the finished, his whole life can turn around. Really, really think about how did you and I get saved? We came to a point where we realized something, didn’t we, all right? Okay, once you realized that you were saved, right there. Do you actually think going to the prayer room and saying that prayer after that dude was the magic powder that got it done? No, no, but that’s what we’ve been trained. «You’ve got to say this».
Without understanding that once you realize something from your heart, you’re gonna confess it. Everything proceeds from your heart. I confess this from my heart. We’ve turned everything into a little trick. There’s something you got to do to make you feel like you were part of it. And God already told you, you didn’t bring nothing to the table. You were part of the finished and we won’t even become a part of the finished. Because religious doctrine tells us you got to do this in order, he did this; you gotta do that in order for that to happen. You gotta do this in order for that to happen. And if you don’t do this and you don’t do that, then you better watch out. You better not cry.
I realized that. I asked myself a question, okay, so what if I’m on a deserted island and I have this wow moment in my heart where all of a sudden I believe in God, so I’m going to hell because nobody was there to take me to the prayer room to say this after them? Or what if I can’t talk? This is a heart issue. And religion has captured our mind and gave us traditional mindset. And by hearing just what you’re hearing right now, some of you may be getting it, but some of you like, «Okay, Pastor, woo»! 'Cause you’re coming up with questions to satisfy that traditional mindset, «Yeah, but what about». And I’m telling you it’s finished, it’s done. Quit all that, «What about»?
Get into the realm of the finished. Get into the realm of the done. Get into the realm of the completed. I receive it, Jesus. You did it, Jesus, I take you. You’re my everything. I take you, Lord, I take you, I take you, I take you. All mankind before time ever began, before Adam fell, he was completely and fully forgiven. Think of that. Religious people sent Adam to hell, you know that, don’t you? Before humanity ever sinned, they were forgiven. It’s finished. It can’t be undone. That’s why this gospel is the almost-too-good-to-be-true news.
Another essential element of the Greek grammar that we need to understand is something, if you put it up, it’s called the genitive possessive and basically we’ll look at the genitive possessive of the case of nouns, but when you see this, and when you see this in the Greek language, it talks about ownership. Somebody’s got to own that noun. One noun, if you will, has got to own that other noun. That one person’s got to own that thing. That’s what it says in the language. In our English Bible, the word «of,» O-F, that’s usually added in the translation to help the verse read easier. And although at times the different prepositional phrases that we use, these are words that connect phrases and clauses together, the translator may use the word «in».
Now, I want you to go to Romans 3:22. I want to show you this. So there is something that happens when we look at having faith in Jesus and having the faith of Jesus. Somebody says, «Please don’t make a big deal out of that». It’s a big deal. 'Cause when I have the faith of Jesus, then it’s a gift. But when I have to have faith in Jesus, it seems like I got to do something. Listen carefully. Romans 3:22. He says, «Even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and,» he says, «to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference».
Now, the phrase is consistently rendered in English translation as faith in Jesus Christ. But the Greek translation says the faith of Jesus Christ, or literally, Jesus’s faith. Pistis iesou Christou, which means the faith of Christ or Jesus Christ’s faith. Oh, so both of the nouns, faith and Jesus Christ, are genitive possessive. Now remember, the genitive possession, it denotes ownership. This is what it means in this scripture, that Jesus owns the faith. Jesus owns the faith, but when you translate it as in, it makes it sound like we need to put our faith in Jesus, and we miss the importance of understanding that the faith belongs to Jesus. It is his.